10. Mend

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There was time in the morning. Time for her to sleep through both her regular alarm and her backup alarm. To concede that her trailer was becoming an oven and decide to avoid broiled brains by stumbling out into the blinding mid-morning sun and over to the lab to get cleaned up. To shuffle back to the trailer for the change of clothes she'd forgotten. To have three cups of tea and stare stonily at the observational array as if it were toying with her emotions deliberately.

Time enough for her to notice Erik striding purposefully toward the door and sprint out to catch him before he could come in. To have several entire conversations in heated whispers. About the fact that quiet was necessary because Luke was asleep, what the hell Luke was doing sleeping in the lab, how the laws of physics may not actually apply to all people equally, a disagreement about the nature of an entirely hypothetical anti-matter engine and whether dark energy was a thing that could be harnessed given sufficient understanding, whether they'd been drinking again in Erik's absence, and if there was such a thing as too much sleep. Unable to organise any section of her feelings about the impossible particle accelerator, she'd told her mentor and friend to hold everything for a little while and she would call him. There was too much to process right now for her to also handle moderating the inevitable, and no doubt contentious, discussion the three of them would have when she told him about the experiment.

Erik pretended to be offended that she felt he'd need moderating and, without having had a single thing explained to him, left looking wide-eyed and frazzled. Jane sympathised.

Plenty of time to head back inside and pull up a plastic chair and creepily watch Luke sleep. It wasn't like she was really watching him sleep, it was more that she still couldn't believe he'd done this thing, that they'd done this thing, and she was trying to talk herself out of the crazy loop.

She'd thrown a thick Navajo blanket over him before she left for the night, the temperature plunging rapidly as the wee hours approached. He had kicked it halfway off, presumably as the warmth of sunrise blazed in through the glass walls, and his lanky limbs were all askew with the fidgeting, making him an even worse fit for the narrow couch than he had been. His head was thrown back and his under shirt was stretched out by some rolling-over tangle, exposing the long, graceful line of his pale throat like a marble column. Jane chewed her thumbnail and felt like she should cover the vulnerable area even as she wrestled with an absurd urge to calculate the slope of it. To graph him until he shrank to fathomable proportions, attempt to grok him in safety while his intimidating and distracting personality was shuttered behind his eyelids.

It was when she was making her fourth cup of tea that he woke. Suddenly. Jumping directly from coma to ramming speed, he'd blinked once and then shot up in a state of full alertness, casing the room with his eyes and looking a little like an alarmed meerkat.

She poured more hot water and stalked over to place a cup on the coffee table near his hand. "Good morning," she murmured, neutrally.

"Jane," he said. He blinked again and the tension in his shoulders dialled down a notch.

"That's tea for you." She pointed to the cup. "I have a clean set of clothes Erik keeps here, and the shower's in the alcove. You know how to work a stall shower?"

He frowned at her, whether at her distant tone or her questioning of his ability to bathe himself, she didn't know. She wasn't paying attention to him anyway, instead she retrieved a t-shirt, jeans, and a belt from the last drawer of her filing cabinet. When she piled them in front of him he wrinkled his nose and looked like he very much wanted to tell her exactly where to shove them, but he closed his eyes and swallowed and didn't say anything.

"You're about the same height and there's a belt. It'll do. So go shower. Absolutely no further science or conversation until after. I have this intuition that you are not a morning person and I am being thoughtful." She also had a certainty that he was very particular about his person and wouldn't dream of being smelly or walking around in an outfit he'd slept in, so it was definitely that she was being thoughtful and not that she desperately needed him to shut himself up out of her sight for a few minutes.

He was savaging her with eyebrow sarcasm, but he stood and strode aloofly past her, carrying himself with such kingly dignity that he seemed to fill up the entire lab with his presence. Not that he really needed to go out of his way to make her feel tiny. Despite the fact that he was in stocking feet and she was in her desert boots, the top of her head only barely came up to his clavicle. Looming deliberately to remind her of it was just rude.

"Do," he was muttering darkly, "one does not merely do."

Jane watched him until the bathroom door slammed shut, then she turned back to her equipment and thought again about the ends of the universe and the fact that she'd walked beside literal living legends. Cooked breakfast with one. She thought about Luke's piercing gaze and his badly hidden desperation. His volatile moods and contrary stillness.

He'd done this. He'd do more. With her continued help and guidance, as well as her practical knowledge of the applicable technology and skill for cutting corners, who knew what the limits of his genius might be? If there were any. What was her biggest responsibility here? Getting the accelerator out to the world, studied and broken down the moment it was humanly possible to do so, or seizing this amazingness with all of her strength and holding on until she found out everywhere it could lead? Her choice, no matter the cost, had always been to hold on to discovery until the absolute bitterest end- until she couldn't hold on any more. She'd met this kind of dilemma before and she knew that nothing had changed. This was her baby, her life, the stuff dreams were made on: no one was going to take it away from her this time.

The world could wait until she found out how deep the rabbit hole was, because there'd be no going back if she went public. No peaceful continuation of the project on their terms, probably no further pursuit at all until the accelerator was fully understood and the circus around it died down. How could that be the right thing? It wasn't like Jane owed the formal academic community for much, it certainly wasn't like she could summon up enough scraps of loyalty to think that she should report to SHIELD before she even knew what she was dealing with. Not when she wasn't at all assured they wouldn't snatch it out of her hands again, bury it, and tell her it was for the best. She might be giving up an opportunity for all mankind if she faltered in her step at this crucial moment.

She felt like Neil Armstrong going down a ladder.

Luke emerged from the bathroom looking tetchy and out of sorts. His wet hair, loose and tucked behind his ears, was longer than it had appeared to be in its usual style, the ends just brushing his shoulders and leaving a damp ring on the collar of his too-big t-shirt. Erik had been getting a bit sensitive about his spare tire lately and a forgiving double XL was a bit more coverage than Luke's trim torso required. The shirt's neck gaped and the uneven hanging of the hem almost managed to camouflage the fact that Luke had to cinch the jeans way in with the belt to keep them from sliding off his slim hips. A flash of pale skin was visible as he lifted his hand to sip the tea he'd taken with him. He looked like a damn teenager, this scientific revolutionary, all sharp angles and loose fabric.

She stared at him a moment, her daze not dissipated by his brief absence. She bit her lip nervously and patted the couch beside her.

He watched her hand distrustfully and could have been all of seventeen between the petulant frown on his face and his baggy outfit rendering him smaller and messier and more human. She had almost opened her mouth to say something stupid before he stalked over and sat down, taking that strange not quite camp fire-style pose with his ankles crossed on the floor. He seemed dreadfully out of place and somehow woefully under-dressed, even though he was finally appropriately clothed for her kind of lab environment. His eyes met hers as clearly and expectantly as ever, their colour an unnervingly vivid, swirling aqua in the direct mid-morning light. Like Earth from space.

Jane sipped her tea, then forced herself to put it down when she realised she was getting mad jittery and the last thing she needed was any more caffeine.

"So yesterday, what we did- what mostly you did, really- do you, you know, actually understand how big of a deal that was?" She ran her hand through her hair and scratched nervously at her scalp, tucking away the unwelcome thought that she'd probably rub herself bald with the habit at the rate she was going.

He quirked an eyebrow at her, but he was still sort of frowning. "I understand that your empiric technical knowledge and my innovation allowed us to overcome an obstacle in our path. I had thought precisely that quality of complementary synergy was the reason we were working together."

Her fingers got tangled in her hair and she yanked them out impatiently. "Luke, your mystery material that you couldn't explain to me has broken the scientific glass ceiling. All of particle physics might have to be rewritten because of what that machine that we built- in one day- can do."

Luke shrugged a little, but there was such a gleam of self-satisfaction in his expression that he managed to smirk without moving his face. "My concern is our research, the device allows us to move forward. What you do with it after we have investigated this avenue is not of interest to me."

"Have you heard of an organisation called SHIELD?" Her heart was loud in her ears and she half expected that this day would end with both of them locked up in some super-secret bunker three miles underground, but whatever. As weird as Luke acted, as mysterious as he continued to be, she could no longer kid herself that she wasn't going to trust him with the whole of her research. She had to, she had to give him absolutely anything he could use because look what he could do with just a little help.

And damn it, she liked him. He made it kind of hard and kind of way too easy, and she wanted to find out what his deal was more every time he seemed offended or bewildered by her interest. There was shit buried in that yard. Bones.

Politely ignoring her subtle panic attack, he squinted at her speculatively and tapped his index finger against his mouth, prompting her to wonder if he was going to drop a bombshell on the conversation. Finally, he tilted his head and said, "It does sound familiar."

"That's it?" She touched his leg in hopes of grounding him on her side and he stared at her hand like she'd put it somewhere way less innocent than his kneecap; she patted him again anyway. "Nothing else to say?"

"I have heard of them, but I know nothing more than that they are organised and apparently well-funded, interest themselves in the unusual, and likely know much that they keep from your people." He tucked his feet to the side, pulling further away. "You suspected that they sent me? That's what all your reservation has been based upon?"

"Not all of it, but yeah. I've dealt with them before. I'm still... dealing with them. Look..." She did look at him, and he looked back with more of that terrifying focus. He so had some idea of what was coming, she was sure of it. Somehow, she still wanted to trust him; he was so shady and she just wanted to trust him anyway so badly. She had faith in him. "Last summer, right, I'd been observing this predictable stellar weirdness and I was getting really excited about it, so I called in Erik. And..."

There was an incredibly long silence and he regarded her steadily, waiting. She shook her head and his lips twitched in a soft, reflexive smile that she had no clue how to interpret.

"Dr. Selvig is very important to you, your academic mentor, but it's more than that isn't it? Your father's friend and colleague, your guardian. Did you ask him to confirm your discovery because of his greater experience or because his acquiescence would also be approval, would also be pride? And yet you shared a discovery of tremendous importance with me this past evening and did not inform him. You thought perhaps today you would finally tell me what you have been working on recently, but he does not wish it and you are hesitant. I suppose, Jane, that you must decide which judgement is the one you most trust. His or yours." He leaned forward and there was some profound knowledge in the gaze that met hers, compassion in the fingers which trailed lightly over her hand where it rested on the cushion between them. "I've told you before that I believe in your instincts. I will listen if you wish to speak, I will not abandon our work together if you wish to be silent.

"I have no desire to punish you for loyalty. I understand its power."

She felt cold and nervous, the weight of indecision pulling her down. It would no longer be his sanity that was in question if she went through with this. "Well, is he right?"

Luke cocked his head.

"To tell me not to trust you."

He smiled, but it was small and broken and his eyes were shimmering slightly. Something wrong twisted itself through his expression, a crack appearing in the façade of his cool beauty and allowing hidden horrors to show, a strange spike of anger and bitter humour and hurt worming through the thoughtful look he was trying to affect. There was something very bleak about his honesty when he said, "Most likely."

"Then I trust you."

He scowled at her in something like outrage, though he didn't seem surprised. "Of all the foolhardy nonsense. Why? When I've just..."

She interrupted with a hand gesture as he was so fond of doing himself, and told him, "I'm contrary."

The giggle this startled out of him was a tiny bit hysterical, his grin a rictus. "I do lie, you know."

"Everyone does," she allowed easily, not reacting when this pronouncement provoked a very strange look. "Have you lied to me?"

"Not... particularly." He seemed mildly annoyed by the admission.

"Sounds legit." Jane smiled and shook her head at him. She wondered if he realised it was his deliberation that sold her, that he had to think about whether Erik's concerns were justified or not. His motives weren't simple, whatever they were, and she would have been hard pressed to believe a simple yes or a simple no. The fact that he was a somehow dangerous person was not new information and wouldn't have been shocking even if it were, and she was almost insulted that he would warn her he was manipulative. Like she hadn't noticed. "You want to grab a snack?"

His lip curled up slightly as he leaned away from her. "I have found your concept of appropriate sustenance somewhat lacking."

Deflecting. She rolled her eyes and started to rise to get something anyway. She was hungry. "Well excuse me, Your Highness."

His fingers twitched, but for once he had no rejoinder.

"There's a toaster strudel in that freezer with my name on it. Then we'll talk. I think you know about what, though I hope you don't know too much or I'm probably going to have the MIB poking around here making my life difficult." She pushed her terrible breakfast into the toaster and leaned on the counter, chuckling at herself. "Men in black other than you, I mean. You can see why our brains went there."

Luke, not having moved from the couch, stared at the coffee table with a look of blanket annoyance and crossed his arms. "I have not the faintest notion what you are babbling about."

"No movie theatres in Swaziland?" It was half teasing and half an actual question.

He made a confirming noise in the back of throat. "For me, no, I would have had to cross the border to South Africa. What is it about seeing the same production of a play over and over again that your people find so appealing?"

Jane paused, never having given it any thought. She shrugged. "If you like something, why wouldn't you want to experience it again? It's like re-reading a book. There's always something new because you're not exactly the same as the first time you read it. Your mood or stuff you've learned, whatever, it changes things. I'm not the biggest movie person, but I'm sure there's lots of reasons."

"I could never have imagined so many ways to waste time as are in this room alone." He gazed around, looking a little helpless. "Is not life brief enough for you?"

She groaned, despairing of him. "It doesn't feel brief if you never have any fun. Honestly, lighten up."

The toaster dinged and she focussed on smearing icing on her strudel, coming over to throw herself back on the couch when the little pastries were thoroughly saturated. She sighed in contentment as she took her first bite.

"If you find that delicious, I truly pity you," Luke commented, watching her.

"Snob."

"If that means that I have standards for what I will eat, then certainly."

Jane giggled and thought the word applied to him more broadly than that. "You haven't even tried it."

"I have tried sufficient foodstuffs from frozen paper boxes to know that they are all unsuitable for consumption. Which was one." He lifted his foot to rest his ankle across the opposite knee, his toes tapping against the air. "You require a cook, Jane. Your diet is unwholesome."

Torn between laughing, outrage, and being oddly touched, she just shook her head.

"Are you going to tell me what you began to tell me earlier sometime before you drop dead of malnutrition?" his wry tone was slightly strained, his raised eyebrow more questioning than sardonic.

"Erik flew out and we drove into the desert to view the phenomena I'd been observing," she blurted, trying to outpace her doubts, "but it had changed. It was lit up like the Northern Lights. There was stratocumulus suddenly everywhere, a clear sky filled in moments, and this swirling electrical storm. We chased it to investigate and..."

Frozen and pale with apparent shock, Luke stared at her for what felt like hours before whispering, "And?"

"And someone was inside."